State Supreme Court OKs new voting districts

By MARC LEVY, Associated Press

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

HARRISBURG — A revised plan to redraw the boundaries of Pennsylvania’s legislative districts won the unanimous approval Wednesday of the state Supreme Court, which rejected renewed appeals by citizen challengers and Democrats who argued the plan, like the previous version, was driven by political considerations and did not meet constitutional guidelines.

The court’s three Republican and three Democratic justices ruled that the new maps are constitutional, even if they do take political considerations into account, and can take effect for Pennsylvania’s 203 House districts and 50 Senate districts beginning with the 2014 elections.

In its decision, the court effectively forced the maps’ architects to reduce the number of counties and municipalities that are split among legislative districts, although this map allows a slightly larger deviation in population between districts than the plan the court rejected last year.

In general, a handful of new districts will appear in areas with relatively fast-growing populations while the maps take pains to keep in place existing district lines and protect the Legislature’s Republican control. Two Democratic senators also likely to face difficult re-election challenges.

But Chester County’s lone Democratic representative in state government wasn’t complaining on Wednesday.

“All of us in the Senate and in the legislature certainly knew that redistricting was going to take place and we knew that most likely the second map would be approved,” said state Sen. Andrew Dinniman, D-19th of West Whiteland.

But Dinniman said the only thing they didn’t know was when the maps would pass, which came as a surprise Wednesday.

“I’m happy to represent, and it’s a privilege to represent any part of Chester County,” Dinniman said.

The new boundaries now include Coatesville and portions of southern Chester County in Dinniman’s district, while the 19th District lost portions of Montgomery County and eastern Chester County.

Dinniman said he is excited to represent the added communities.

“I know those communities well since my terms as county commissioner,” said Dinniman, who was a commissioner for 14 years.

He added there is nothing to complain about with the new maps since they took away some of the heavier Republican areas in his district while adding some that will be more Democratic.

“In reality, many areas where I have done traditionally well in were retained,” Dinniman said.

Dinniman said the maps in part reflected the shift in Republicans who left Delaware County and went west, which the new districts needed to adjust for.

“They were fair and equitable in the areas they gave me,” he said.

On the addition of southern portions in the county, Dinniman said he is excited to have the chance to help grow agricultural opportunities.

“Having grown up on a farm, I am very happy to get farms back,” Dinniman said, joking he will be able to demonstrate how to milk cows.

Chief Justice Ronald Castille said in the 59-page opinion that the court’s review of the maps “discloses no overt instances of bizarrely shaped districts” that would confirm allegations that the maps’ architects drew the boundaries in a political exercise designed to group certain voter blocs and maximize a partisan outcome.

The court’s action came after it had ruled 4-to-3 last year to reject the maps drawn by the five-member commission of top lawmakers — two Democrats and two Republicans — and a former judge, who is a Republican appointed by the Supreme Court.

In rejecting the Legislative Reapportionment Commission’s original plans in 2012, it agreed with challengers that political considerations had unduly split municipalities and produced strangely shaped districts. As a result, last year’s legislative elections were based on maps drawn in 2001.

Many of those who successfully challenged those maps lodged the same complaints about the redrawn maps. But the reapportionment commission’s lawyers argued that they had met the court’s standards because they reduced the number of split counties and municipalities and created districts with more compact shapes.

The architect of the Senate map, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, said the difference this time was that the map was drawn to meet tougher standards laid out last year by the Supreme Court. The rejected map had been drawn to meet standards of past decades that the court subsequently threw out with its decision last year, he said.

The Senate’s Democratic leader, Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, said the map is “partisan and only serves narrow, partisan political interests.”

Still, political considerations are not forbidden in drawing district maps, the court ruled.

“These ‘political’ factors can operate at will — so long as they do not do violence to the constitutional restraints regarding population equality, contiguity, compactness and respect for the integrity of political subdivisions,” Castille wrote.

The Pennsylvania Constitution requires the districts to be redrawn every decade to account for population shifts and maintain a nearly equal number of residents. The districts also must be as compact and contiguous as possible, and only absolutely necessary divisions should be made to counties or municipalities.

Dividing the state’s population by 203 House and 50 Senate districts, the “ideal” size would consist of 62,573 people in each House district, and in the Senate, 259,048. None of the districts deviates more than 4 percent from those targets.

Castille said the court purposely has not established a numerical figure for district population or for how many counties and other governmental subdivisions can be split up because various constitutional requirements and practical needs must be balanced.

“It is not even possible to set a specific standard of deviation in population equality by which to measure, in any realistic sense, whether a subdivision split is necessary in some ‘absolute’ sense,” Castille wrote.

A House plan drawn up by Republicans moves five seats and was uncontested by Democrats.

In the Senate, the suburban Pittsburgh 40th District seat once held by a jailed former senator, Jane Orie, will move across the state to the fast growing Pocono Mountains region in northeastern Pennsylvania, while big changes are in store for two Democrats, one in the Pittsburgh area and one in the Harrisburg area.

The 38th District seat held by Democrat Jim Ferlo of Pittsburgh will shift to include heavily Republican areas north of the city once represented by Orie and raise the prospect of a tough re-election battle in 2014 for the third-term Democrat with Orie’s successor, Sen. Randy Vulakovich.

Meanwhile, central Pennsylvania’s 15th District, held by freshmen Democrat Rob Teplitz, will gain heavily Republican Perry County and shed some Democratic-leaning Harrisburg suburbs that Democrats complain will favor a Republican in the 2016 election.